Working with Volunteers
Our online tool provides an overview of the key legal obligations that not-for-profits have towards volunteers.
Use our tool
Our tool will help you understand more about:
Recruitment of volunteers
We’ll help you understand how to recruit volunteers fairly and safely.
Volunteer safety
Understand your organisation’s key legal obligations in relation to the safety of its volunteers.
Volunteers and unlawful workplace behaviour
Our tool will help you to protect volunteers and other people your volunteers interact with from unlawful workplace behaviour.
Managing the performance of volunteers and/or ending the volunteer relationship
We’ll help you get the best out of your volunteers by assisting your organisation to understand and follow a clear process of managing the performance of volunteers.
This tool is designed to complement our National Volunteer Guide, which provides further information about working with volunteers.
What to expect
As you progress through the questions, you will be provided with an overview of the legal issues, recommendations and links for further information based on your responses to our questions.
At the end of this tool, you will be provided with an opportunity to print a report containing our recommendations.
It is a useful tool for committee members (or directors), volunteer managers as well as those who work with not-for-profit organisations that engage volunteers (such as peak bodies).
Easy to understand
Our tool is written in plain language and will help guide you through some complex legal concepts.
Free to use
We know how costly legal information can be. That’s why we’ve created this free tool – to help your organisation get started with work with volunteers.
Additional resources
We have included links to other resources and to where you can get more free help, as well as clear steps of what to do next.
Why it’s important to understand your legal obligations
Volunteers are an important resource to many, if not most, community organisations. By understanding the legal issues relating to the engagement and management of volunteers, volunteer involving organisations can make sure their relationship with volunteers is meaningful, while being managed respectfully and safely.
About us
Justice Connect’s Not-for-profit Law program is a national legal service, offering free and affordable legal supports for not-for-profit organisations and social enterprises.
We’re a charity ourselves, with over 10 years’ experience, so we understand the context in which not-for-profit organisations operate. For some organisations, complying with complex laws can be daunting. For others, it is prohibitively expensive. That’s why we provide timely and appropriate legal support – to help community organisations make sense of the law, stay legally compliant, thrive within complexity, and achieve good governance.